


Aether's Rain

by Stowaway_Macaw



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Backstory, Gen, kind of original
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25767136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stowaway_Macaw/pseuds/Stowaway_Macaw
Summary: Truthfully, nobody ever knows how their life begins. They don’t remember it. Why would anyone ever be able to? Their mind would be hardly developed. We remember our younger years though, even if it’s only a hazy memory.Jevin retells the story of his earliest years to Xisuma, and he does his best to recall what it was like, even though he was completely different from how he was back then.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one is actually gonna be kinda short (like two or three parts) but I tried to make it at least somewhat okay. Here's a fair warning though: the story starts out a lot less coherent than I would normally write, but this is to replicate the actual thought process of the narrator. It gets better. I hope you enjoy!

Jevin was laying on his ocean base, soaking up the warmth of the sun. Simply sitting in direct sunlight always felt so nostalgic to him. All he could hear was the lapping of waves against his base from far down below and the occasional squeak of a dolphin followed by a quiet splash. It was blissful. Had he any lungs, he’d have taken a big gulp of the fresh air that had been dusted in seaspray. After listening to the same sounds for so long, he easily picked up on the sound of rockets being fired. 

He didn’t bother to get up and allowed whoever decided to pay him a visit to land and approach him on their own. Sure enough, the person landed fairly elegantly behind him, although it was somewhat loud. They stood still for a moment, presumably waiting to be acknowledged, before leisurely strolling up to his resting spot and laying down beside him while simultaneously removing their elytra and stowing it away.

"Enjoying some time off?" Jevin recognized Xisuma's voice.

"... Yep, sure am. What's the point of an ocean base if you can't do this from time to time?" Jevin remarked, shifting slightly so that his hands were brought under his head, providing some support. Xisuma hummed in agreement and the two fell into a comfortable silence that lasted several minutes.

"... You really seem to like sunlight, huh?" Xisuma spoke with a soft tone, his voice blending slightly with the ambiance. Jevin thought for a moment before he responded lazily.

"Yeah. It gets me all sentimental. Kinda reminds me of how things were before I joined you guys." More silence. Eventually, Xisuma blinked hard and shook his head, bringing himself to an upright position so that he was looking to the horizon instead of straight into the blinding sky.

"By the way, I hope you don't mind me asking, but what was it like then?" Xisuma asked, genuinely curious while also looking for an excuse to not be looking almost directly at the sun. Xisuma made sure he was careful when he questioned the hermits about potentially sensitive topics and had made it a personal rule that he wouldn't pressure anyone for answers they didn't want to give about their past. He didn't believe that someone's past should be grounds for their judgement in the present and stuck to that principle like glue. He himself had some shadowy parts of his past and was very empathetic to any who were uncomfortable sharing similar experiences. Jevin didn't talk very much about his past, but never actively avoided it so Xisuma thought it appropriate to make a tiny exception to his "don't ask what they won't tell you" rule. After all, it had been so long since Jevin joined them and they'd grown much closer.

"Hmm, I guess I haven't really told anyone huh?" Jevin mused, not looking away from the sky.

"It's not anything sensitive or hard to talk about in the sense that I don't like to recall the memories, just that I couldn't really perceive the world quite like I can now. I personally think I've gotten better at it." Jevin clarified. He finally turned his head to look Xisuma in the eyes.

"You got time? It's kind of a long story. Nothing really exciting, but you might find it interesting." Jevin smiled at the last part. Xisuma nodded and Jevin hoisted himself up and stretched his arms above his head before crossing his legs and spinning to face Xisuma.

"Okay, well to start off, things were… pretty fuzzy at first. I was a lot simpler then and hadn't seen or heard about humans or really any life in general other than me. It was like… I dunno, tunnel vision? It was just my instincts and that's it. Hop around until either you attacked someone, someone attacked you, or you dissolved in a puddle of water. Pretty meaningless honestly. I don't remember colors or weather or buildings, I'm sure there were different biomes, but I had a pretty one-track mind. I never paid attention to any of it. At the time, there wasn't a reason to. All I paid attention to were two things:" 

He held up his hand and lifted a finger when he listed each of the two things.

"One was movement. The other was light. The most I can remember from when I first spawned was how bright it was."

"That's it?" Xisuma questioned. Though he wasn't sure why he was surprised. Jevin was originally just a normal mob, and they weren't exactly known for their intelligence. Jevin laughed at Xisuma's question and nodded.

"Yeah, pretty weird to think about when you see me now, huh?" He leaned back on his arms and Xisuma couldn't help but agree as the two sat stop a giant ocean bound structure of Jevin's own creation. He definitely came a long way, but Xisuma was growing more and more curious as to how exactly he managed to go from a mindless slime that couldn't even perceive difference in colors, to a fun loving, intelligent hermit that could talk and feel and create incredible builds of grand proportions. Xisuma had approached him initially to borrow his help, but suddenly decided it had been too long since he'd had a break and absolutely had to know what his friend hadn't yet told him.

"By the way…" Jevin warned.

"I'm going to describe things as close as I can get it to exactly how I thought back then, so get ready to hear those two ideas I mentioned very, very frequently." He chuckled at the thought of it already, remembering just how small his world used to be.

__________

Light. That was all. It was the only thing that I could comprehend. It was always bright. Always. I would move, but the light didn't. Neither did the land. Sometimes, other things would move, but they would stop moving very quickly. I kept moving. I could choose to move or to stop, but I always chose to keep moving.

At one point, I started to move forward, but I began to move downward very rapidly, and not by choice. I kept moving because I was being pulled by something that wasn't me. Then, I stopped. I was in something that was making me float, and I moved out of it. Light was moving now as well, but it was moving away. Something felt different when I saw the light move, when I saw it leave. It wasn't good.

Agitation. Discomfort. Nervousness... new things that I could feel that weren’t movement or light, but something I could tell wasn’t physical. The light went and it was eventually gone. All it left were those feelings. I didn't move for a moment. I waited. I didn't know why I waited, but I did. Then, I saw movement again. It was another thing that wasn't me. It wasn't like what I'd seen before, though. It was different. I waited while looking at the thing that was different. It moved differently from me. It saw me and moved strangely toward me, it moved quicker, it ran. I waited still, feeling something else that I knew wasn’t physical: unsurity. The thing started moving around me quickly and did different, strange things. It moved, no... placed, a material around me and I couldn't move anywhere I chose anymore.

I stopped waiting then and started moving in the different, smaller, space. It was smaller than the land, but the material let the light move through it. The material was transparent. The thing placed more around me while the light moved in circles in the sky. It came and went many times before the thing finally stopped placing walls. I was less agitated, but I knew the space I was in wasn't good. I disliked it.

The thing would look, no, stare at me every now and then, but I would wait when it did. I would stare back. It would sometimes move when I stared back. It would respond to my stare. I felt something else when it responded and paid attention to me, it was good.

Happiness, pleasure, satisfaction. One time, it even tried to move like I did. It hopped. I did the same when it hopped. I mimicked it. I liked mimicking it. It was fun. It did a different, strange thing one time: it hopped in a circle. I mimicked it. I had fun mimicking it. It moved in fun and different ways that made me feel happy when I mimicked… or copied it. The small space didn’t make me as agitated.

I started to like the thing. The thing would put objects in the space I was kept in, my enclosure. I would jump whenever it gave me attention or something to bounce around the enclosure. I would stare at it when it didn’t pay attention to me. I would watch it gather things and put them inside boxes that I hadn’t noticed before. Were there always boxes that could hold things in them? I didn’t know. 

__________

Xisuma shook his head, bewildered.

“Wait, you didn’t know what chests were?” Jevin laughed, realizing just how absurd that it would sound.

“I mean, yeah. I didn’t know what a lot of things were. I didn’t know what words or air or even sound was. I couldn’t really hear until I started paying attention to it, and I didn’t have coherent thoughts like I do now.”

“What about your ‘enclosure?’”

“It was a little tube made from glass. The person who found me decided to keep me in there. I don’t actually know how long I spent in there since time wasn’t really a thing for me either, but I get the sense that it was a while. They even built a building around where I was kept.”

“Huh, interesting. Anyways, sorry. Please continue.” Jevin nodded and kept talking.

__________

I started learning more as I was forced to watch the thing. I didn’t mind. There was a lot that I started to learn and notice. The light that moved was the sun and moon. It was the day and night. It was the dark and light. The days were when the thing would pay attention to me, and the nights were when the thing would lay very still until it was day again. I didn’t like when it would do that. I didn’t know why.

One day, the thing brought two objects and put them in front of me. It had made my enclosure bigger so that it could walk in and I could bounce around more. It put the two objects in front of me and didn’t move them. I waited for it to do something. After it waited for a bit, it hopped over to one object like I would and I mimicked the motion. It then hopped back and let me bounce an object… no, ball, in the air a few times before taking it away again. It stopped moving and stared at me. I hopped toward one of the objects it had put on the floor and I got to play again. The thing then picked up the two objects before placing them down again. I hopped in the same direction, but the thing didn’t give me a toy to play with. Instead, it just picked up the two objects and placed them down again.

I didn’t know what it was doing. I wanted to play, but the thing would only let me if I was able to guess which object it wanted me to hop towards. I was frustrated. We repeated the process several times before it stopped and left the enclosure. I didn’t know why I felt bad, but I felt bad. The next day, it started doing it again, this time with three objects. I didn’t get the guess right as many times as before and I got even more frustrated. We kept trying until I felt like I was too stuck to have any fun, so I stared at the objects for a long time. I learned something big that day. 

One of the objects was different. They were all the same shape, but one looked weird. I didn’t know why I didn’t notice it before. I hopped toward the one that looked different and I got to play again. The thing placed the objects down again, it shuffled them. I hopped toward the different one again. I got to play again. I kept doing this, and I had fun that day. The amount of objects gradually increased, and I kept getting the guess right. I liked the different looking object too. It looked like the material that the thing would wear on itself. 

The thing would move itself… its body? It would make the air move. I didn’t know why though. I wanted to mimic it, but we had different bodies and my body wouldn’t let me mimic it. I was sad that day since I realized I couldn’t move the air like the thing did.

I wanted to learn more so that I could know more about the thing. I noticed more. The different looking object was different because it had a different color. Colors were incredible. Some looked good together while others didn’t. The thing wore a material… clothes… that were white. The sky was blue when the light shone. My enclosure was encased in grays while the structure nearby… the house, was brown and beige and black. I noticed greens and yellows and oranges that only showed when the sun came up.

The colors were great. They all made me so happy. The thing and I would play guessing games based on colors, and I noticed something else that the thing did. It would move the air in the same way every time it looked at a color. I wanted to know what it meant, so instead of watching it, I felt the air move. I listened. The first thing I heard was the name of a color, it was purple. I heard other things as well. The air would move on its own, and I heard wind. Water would fall from the sky, and I heard rain. Other things… animals are what the thing called it, would make noise. I heard birds and cows and pigs and sheep. The thing was a person. I learned that the person had names for everything, and that, despite my narration of everything prior, was the first time I had learned the words for many things I already knew about.

__________

“How were you able to hear all of that?” Xisuma asked, fully invested in the story.

“Well, since I didn’t have any ears, and still don’t actually, I can listen by just feeling the air move. I know it probably took a long time before I was able to get that sensitive, but when you spend hours on end sitting in a glass tube, all you can really do is observe. I still wish I knew how long I spent in there, but numbers still hadn’t clicked for me.” Xisuma nodded and Jevin continued.

__________

I spent so much time listening and learning the names of everything I could see, from colors, to feelings, to objects. I loved it. For the first time, the day sky wasn’t just light, it was blue and big and bright and happy. I learned that there were many words and names that belonged to one object or idea. The night was dark and scary and dangerous, but it was also beautiful and peaceful and cool. The person is what I learned the most about. It wasn’t an “it”, but rather a “he” and he had a kind, but tired face. He was happy when I got guesses right and sad when I got it wrong. He was disappointed when I would accidentally hurt him, so I stopped doing that so we could both be happy.

I still didn’t know what to do with myself though. So instead of just observing, I would ask questions to myself. What is this enclosure made from? What is the person saying? What color am I? I most wanted to know more about the person who had captured me. He was always busy, but would still play with me. I saw how he moved and created things that I wanted to create too. I didn’t know how though.

I kept observing and my desire for the abilities that he had kept growing. Days passed and I started growing restless. The guessing games we played started to grow old. I was getting bored. I wanted to do more, so of course the time came when I stopped waiting for him to come and play with me. There was nothing inside my enclosure, so I could only focus on myself.

I looked so different from all of the other creatures, including the person keeping me here. I was not quite liquid, but not quite solid either. He called me a slime, but I didn’t look exactly like the other things he called slimes. I was a different color, the same color as the sky. I was blue, but the other slimes were green and they would always try to hurt him. I didn’t like them and I didn’t want to be like them. I wanted to create and learn and not try to hurt others.

There was something I liked about myself, even though it was different from him. I realized that I could change my shape. It took a lot of work and a lot of concentration, but whenever he was too busy to play, I would move my body so that I could start to look like him. He didn’t notice for a long time until I was able to almost completely replicate his appearance. I could see myself in the reflection of the glass and would do all the concentrating I could to keep the shape I’d worked so hard to get.

He noticed when I was on the floor of my enclosure, using my new hand to make a noise against the glass, an action I learned was called knocking. It took me a few tries before he could hear it since I was still not quite solid, but when he did, I don’t think I’ve ever seen his eyes go so wide. He dropped what he was holding, iron it was called, and stared at me for a long time. I didn’t know how to stand and meet his gaze, but he crouched down to my level eventually.

For some reason, from that point onward, time passed slower. The moment he looked me in the eyes, events in my life wouldn’t go by in a half-conscious haze like they had been. Paying attention only out of boredom seemed unthinkable and I wanted so bad to capture every single detail of my life from then onward. When he had looked into my eyes that day, I couldn’t ask him how long I had been in that enclosure, but I wanted to ask if what seemed like only a blink of time to me was actually years I spent there. 

“You… how did… I… wha….” he spoke quietly, not forming any words that were quite complete. He ran his fingers through his brown hair and let out a choked laugh.

“You… I can’t believe I’m looking at this right now. How did you even do that? Slimes can do that? Or maybe you’re not a slime and my first theory was right? Agh, I don’t know…” 

__________

“Wait, how did he not notice you before that?” Xisuma asked, genuinely confused.

“I would experiment with it while he was busy building. He was pretty focused on it and would sometimes spend several days just out working on it. He gave me less time than he did at first, so I spent a lot of time alone.” Jevin let out a sudden chuckle as he remembered something. He kept laughing as he spoke.

“You know, when he first noticed me, since I wasn’t looking at him while I was trying to copy his shape, I didn’t actually look as stable as I do now. Looking back on it, the shape was vaguely human, but I was melting in quite a few places.” Xisuma laughed with Jevin at the thought of a slime you’ve kept near you suddenly morphing into this drippy and crude imitation of yourself.

“That sounds a bit scary if I’m being honest.” Jevin laughed harder at Xisuma’s comment.

“You know what? I think that might have been why he was so tense for the next few days.” Xisuma laughed before he suddenly stood and stretched before looking over to Jevin.

“Do you mind if we take a break? We’ve been at this for a while and I’m getting a bit hungry.” Jevin smiled and got up as well.

“Yeah sure. I’ve got time, but I think you’re the one who’s the most pressed for it.” He said while smirking at Xisuma who sheepishly shrugged, remembering that he originally came to get help from Jevin. He brushed it off and opened his inventory.

“Let’s head to the cowmmercial district and get some quick food. I don’t really feel like more carrots right now.” Jevin said, earning a nod of agreement from Xisuma as he grabbed the elytra out of his open inventory. As Jevin was putting his elytra on, Xisuma asked another question.

“Did you ever find out how long you were in that place?” Jevin paused and a look of contemplation mixed with frustration and a twinge of regret crossed his face, like he was trying to remember something despite knowing he never learned what he was trying to recall.

“No, no I didn’t.”


	2. Chapter 2

Xisuma glided over to Jevin who was gazing in the windows and doorways of different shops. He held a small white box in his hands as Jevin spotted him incoming in the corner of his gaze. He landed carefully and kept the box as steady as he could. Jevin turned to face him as Xisuma opened the lid to showcase the box of doughy and sugary cinnabons.

“Where did you even get those?” Jevin asked, confused.

“Cub’s cinnabon shop!” There was a beat of silence.

“Doesn’t he just sell ancient debris there?”

“No, he sells real ones too. You’ve just gotta know where to look!” Xisuma said, a cheerful smile on his face. Jevin decided to leave it alone and the two sat under one of Scar’s custom trees built in front of the town hall. The glimmer of the diamond-like flowers blooming from the trees cast spots of light on the pair as they snacked, the specks of light making Jevin look like some sort of crystal ball. It was a fun thing to witness.

Jevin ate his cinnabon and did his best to move the bites of food down to his midsection where others couldn’t see it be dissolved in the blue slime. It was one of the biggest reasons Jevin wore a hoodie, since watching your friend digest food was probably not something everyone wanted to see.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll keep talking while we eat. I don’t really need to chew so…” Jevin indicated as he took bites out of the cinnabon for the sake of normalcy. Xisuma nodded, his mouth full and his helmet in his lap.

__________

I did my best every moment of every day, one goal in mind: I wanted to create something just like I’d seen him do. The longer I tried, the more I realized that I wasn’t meant to be any other shape than my original droplike form. I didn’t care. It wasn’t comfortable all the time, though I’m glad it wasn’t painful. It was so strange to suddenly have arms and legs, and he thought so too. 

He wouldn’t play with me anymore. He didn’t give me any beach balls or colored blocks. All he did was build and watch me. He’d be out there, creating things while I was left in my enclosure. It made me mad, but I didn’t want to focus on something like that. I decided to use my lack of interaction as a way to focus more on keeping my form.

There came a point where I was finally able to not liquify and drip as I held my new human-esque shape. I could knock on the glass and make the loud, clunking noise that he would make whenever he knocked on the glass. I could hold myself on two feet and walk around, though balancing took me a bit longer to master than I would have hoped. I made sure to move and idle just like him, and I even mimicked him to the gentle rise and fall of his chest, though I had no idea why he did it. Everything from his short, bouncy hair to the way his voice produced sound, I did my best to mimic.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the day I made a noise from my shapeshifted vocal chords. He dropped the potion of speed he was brewing and didn’t move for a long time, just staring at me.

That was also the day he let me out of my enclosure.

__________

“He let you out?” Xisuma had finished his cinnabon and was listening intently with his helmet back on.

“Yeah… he did.” There was a pause.

“...You don’t seem too happy about it.” Jevin hummed in response with a look of mild distaste.

“Yeah… I don’t think I’d be the same person today if he hadn’t done that, but now that I know more about people and him, I’m realizing what he wanted to happen.” Wisely, Xisuma didn’t say anything and simply allowed Jevin to continue.

__________

He had broken the glass, and I didn’t know what to do at first. He didn’t stay though, and just went back to building. I took a step forward after I stood still for what was probably several minutes. It was the first time since I’d first arrived in this new world that I had stepped out of the enclosure. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. What did he want from me? Why did he let me out?

For a while, I watched him build. He was building a tower, one that didn’t look like the building that housed my enclosure. It had a roof and was made from stone and wood. It took time before I didn’t want to watch him anymore, and instead, I went over to a nearby grove of trees.

I knew that it would take a while, but I was eventually able to tear the bark of the tree and successfully copy what I’d seen him do many times. My hands were uncomfortable and it was difficult to keep them solid enough to harvest the wood. It took several times as long to cut down the tree than the time I’d seen him do the same. 

It took the rest of the day for me to craft planks of wood from what I’d gathered. I was so focused on my long-awaited opportunity to create that it took a whole day and a half for me to realize that he didn’t look at me anymore. All he did was work, even as I was finally able to create things alongside him, he never reacted to anything I would make or do. 

I had gathered up a sizable pile of wooden planks when I decided to rummage around the chests and see what I could find. There was a lot in each chest, from ore to wool to food, but there was one large chest that caught my attention. It was full of the clothes he would wear. Several dark pants and white variants of several tops. There were T-shirts and labcoats and sweaters like the one he wore outside at that very moment. Among all of the white clothes was only one hoodie that I’d never seen him wear. When I took it out of the chest, I saw why. On the back of the hoodie was a giant tear, presumably caused by a mob with less control than myself.

I grabbed the hoodie and some pants that were too long for him. I had to settle for being slightly taller than him since I didn’t know how to make myself smaller, just how to alter my shape. After I gathered them up in my arms, I took them to him while he was still building outside and made vague vocal noises until he finally glanced over at me with the unusable clothes in my arms.

His reaction was not at all what I was expecting. He threw down his axe and started yelling at me.

“You went through my stuff!? You can do that!? Why on earth!? You can’t do that! Get your own stuff!” Startled by the outburst, I held up the ripped hoodie so that it was in front of me, trying to show him that I wanted to wear it. I knew I physically couldn’t explain myself since talking was still out of the question. He forced out a sigh and turned away as he responded.

“Fine. You want the hoodie? Take the hoodie. Just don’t go through my stuff again and stop trying to get my attention.” At the time, I had no idea why he was so agitated or why he didn’t want to pay attention to me anymore, but it hurt when he yelled at me. It hurt a lot. Holding my shape suddenly became more taxing and grief burned in me as I watched him pick up his axe and walk away.

I gathered up the clothes again and went back to my pile of wooden planks.

__________

Xisuma looked at Jevin, not sure if he should ask what was on his mind. Jevin noticed and stopped his story to prompt Xisuma to ask the question.

“If you’re comfortable with telling me... “

“You want to know why he started ignoring me?” Xisuma nodded. Jevin shifted his stance to a more comfortable position.

“Well, I don’t know the exact reason, but I think once he saw that I was actually getting smarter, I think he realized what keeping me there had actually done. If he resolved to keep me around, it wouldn’t be like having a pet like what he thought it would be like. It ended up being more like raising a child instead of a slime. I think once he saw that if he didn’t let me go and despawn somewhere, he’d be obligated to keep me safe. I think he decided that he didn’t want to let me become anything more than just a slime and he’d cut his losses while I was still unable to think on his level. He could tell it was getting out of hand.” 

“...That’s… so sad…” Xisuma looked genuinely hurt and concerned for his friend and Jevin immediately lightened his expression and spoke in a lighter tone.

“It’s honestly fine. I know I kinda based myself off of him, but I realized he was a jerk after I found some other people who were way nicer to me. I never even bothered to learn his name. Besides,” Jevin looked Xisuma in the eyes, a bright smile lighting up his features.

“if he hadn’t tried to get rid of me, I wouldn’t have figured out something really important about myself.”

__________

Days passed, and I was still feeling terrible. I had donned the torn hoodie and black pants, somewhat struggling to not absorb them while I built. I had figured out how to craft tools which made gathering more blocks much easier. I had constructed a tiny cube of a shack, right next to his tower. I spent those days trying to talk to myself, repeating words and phrases I had heard spoken while I was in my enclosure. Of course, the day I finished my shack would be simultaneously the best and worst day of my life.

Out of absolutely nowhere, a diamond blade sliced through the base of my neck from behind me as I admired my hard work, and in that one moment, for the first time ever, there was absolutely no light anywhere. 

I felt weightless, but I could still feel my body. I could have sworn that my head had split from my body, but I felt fine then. It was like nothing had happened and I was still whole. The only difference was that I was in a large, empty expanse with no point of reference, other than myself.

In an attempt to call for someone, I tried to speak, though the noise was quiet and barely recognizable. Even so, a glowing panel flickered to life. Text that had taken me so long to learn to read started to scroll across the panel. It took me some time before I could read it all, but eventually, I was able to make it out.

“Welcome to the Minecraft player interface. The panel is voice-controlled. Please say aloud what you wish to be called.” What I was called? Was I called anything? I didn’t think so, but I didn’t know what else to do. So, I spoke a word that I’d heard said but couldn’t quite say in hopes that it would be picked up properly. It was fun to try and say, as difficult as it was. “Heaven” was what I tried to say, not quite understanding the use of a personal name, and simply wanting to say what I’d heard him say under his breath when looking to the sky. I could only remember falling from the sky, so that’s what I’d decided on.

“iJevin. Is this correct?”

Not… exactly what I was going for, but I thought it sounded cool anyway. I whispered out a “yes” and the panel changed again to a list. I had no idea what the list was, but each item on the list had a picture there, showing a landscape. There was one that stood out to me, it looked so similar to where I’d just come from, with barren grass and groves of trees.

Curious, I tried my absolute hardest to speak the name that was next to the picture and just as I did, the panel fizzled out and I was suddenly somewhere very different. It looked just like the picture, but there was one thing that was different.

Someone was there.

__________

Xisuma was staring wide-eyed at Jevin as he spoke, but he interrupted him to ask a question.

“What happened when you were brought to the interface? Shouldn’t you have just respawned since you were considered a new player then?”

“I would have, but that was a hardcore world. My death meant that I couldn’t go back there.” Xisuma nodded, understanding the implications. He looked down suddenly, furrowing his brows.

“Still though… he killed you? Was he that desperate to…” Xisuma trailed off.

“Yeah, he probably panicked when he saw what I built and wanted me gone. I don’t know if it was a spur of the moment thing and he actually feels bad about it now or if he had been planning to do it anyway and finally built up the courage. Either way, I’m glad he did it.” Xisuma looked up at Jevin, a look of immense confusion on his face.

“If he didn’t then I wouldn’t have discovered that I was considered a player and I might have spent my days trying to copy him. I feel like I might have ended up as more of a jerk if that had happened. Also, I met some pretty cool people.”

__________

I stood face to face with someone I’d never seen before. They looked like him, but they were still different. He wore yellow instead of white and the bright hoodie he was wearing had the face of a strange creature stitched into it. They blinked a few times before finally saying something.

“Uh, hey there! I don’t think I’ve seen you before, but I guess if you’re here, you were invited to the server. So Jevin’s your name, huh?” I had no idea what to say. Was he not surprised by what I was? We looked so different and back where I came from, my captor would look at me strangely, mumbling to himself about how strange I was. The yellow-clad man in front of me didn’t look bothered at all. I tried to say hi, but I was too nervous to actually say it correctly, and I was starting to drip as my feet seeped into the blades of grass.

“Woah, uh, okay well, it’s fine. I guess you’re more new than I thought. You can understand me, right?” I nodded this time instead.

“Great! This is just a survival server, so if you die, you’ll respawn, okay?” He spotted my bare feet that were slowly absorbing the grass.

“Here, follow me. I’m going to make you some shoes.” He held out his hand, but I had absolutely no idea what to do. After a beat of silence, he grabbed my drippy hand and pulled me along until we reached a small square of cobblestone with a single chest stashed nearby. He led me to the chest and let go of my hand, flicking some of the blue slime from his fingers and started rummaging through the chest until he pulled out a few pieces of leather.

“Just gimmie a little time here. You can sit down or watch if you want.” Without waiting for a response, he began trimming and dyeing the leather a dark black, eventually ending up with a newly crafted pair of sandals.

“These aren’t going to protect you from anything like boots would, but I don’t have enough leather for that. These should at least keep you from melting into flowers.” He handed them to me and I sat down on the cobblestone wall and slipped them on. When I realized how much easier it made standing and walking on grass without losing my shape, I looked up at him, gave the closest thing to a smile I could muster, and spoke in a garbled whisper.

“Thank you…”

__________

“I’m so glad you found someone nicer to spend time with.” Xisuma said happily. Jevin smiled a smile that was so much more natural compared to the first one he gave his first friend,

“Yeah, me too. I met a bunch of other people too and they were all very understanding. Thanks to all the time I spent talking to them, I got plenty of practice and was finally able to start talking normally. They were really cool about it. They even helped me fix up the hoodie.” He turned to show the design stitched into the back of the hoodie.

“This is a patch we made and stitched on together. It’s a nice memory.” He turned back around to face Xisuma.

“Did things ever get tough?” he asked. Jevin thought for a moment before replying.

“Not really, though I did have a hard time when I finally realized what had happened to me when I left the hardcore world. It wasn’t a very good feeling, knowing that I was killed by someone I thought I could trust. In the end though, I’m just glad I was able to find real friends and a real family.” He smiled warmly as the sun dipped far down enough so that its light shone across the cowmmercial district and right into the eyes of the two hermits. Xisuma squinted at the brightness while Jevin just looked happily into the sun. Xisuma laughed at Jevin’s ability to look directly at something so bright.

“I sometimes forget that your eyes don’t work like ours. You came from the aether, right?” Jevin started at the question and looked over at Xisuma, blinking a few times.

“The… aether?”

“Yeah. You haven’t heard of it? It can only be accessed in a few special worlds, but I know there are mobs there that are basically blue slimes. It’s like a sky dimension.” Jevin thought in silence as he contemplated this. How had he not heard of that?

“Yeah… if it’s a sky dimension, then that would make sense. That’s why I remember it being so bright…” It was a good feeling to finally know where he might have come from.

“Maybe one day I’ll try to visit one of those special worlds…” Jevin mused. Xisuma smiled at him supportively.

“I’m sure the other hermits and I would be more than happy to help you out if you want. Visiting the aether sounds like it’d be fun.” He spoke so cheerfully that Jevin got a warm feeling flowing through him. He smiled at his admin with the brightest smile he could muster.

“I’d like that. Maybe we can plan a vacation there!” He said with a light chuckle.

“I’m sure we could all use a vacation. That would make a nice trip. I’ll do some research and let you know if anyone wants to tag along.” Xisuma said, a light resolve in his tone. Jevin nodded and turned his head back to face the sun. He looked fondly down the horizon and his gaze traveled up the rays of light and stopped to rest directly on the warm light of the evening.

“Thanks, X.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoyed this shorter story. I wrote this while also planning another fic (which may or may not be a murder mystery) and if you're reading this, I want to know your opinion: in a murder mystery setting, who would you want to be included? I have most of the hermits already decided, but I can't decide if I want to use one of the roster slots for either Grian or Beef. If you have a preference or want to make absolutely sure your favorite hermit makes it in, do let me know!


End file.
